Recovered Torahs reveal history of Czech Jews

FORT WORTH, Texas — Nearly 40 years ago, Beth-El Congregation obtained a Torah — a parchment scroll containing the first five books of the Bible — that survived the Holocaust, although most of the Czech Jews who treasured it did not.

Beth-El, in Fort Worth, Texas, recently installed an exhibit paying tribute to the scroll's poignant history.

The Torah, from a small farming community called Uhrineves in Czechoslovakia, is one of 1,564 such scrolls seized by Nazis as they deported Czech Jews to concentration camps and death camps.